Budget airline easyJet is to create more than 300 jobs when it takes over spare flight slots at Gatwick Airport.

The move will help counter job losses created by the economic fallout from the September 11 terrorist attacks on America.

EasyJet will increase its services at Gatwick after several airlines dropped services in the wake of the attacks.

The company said it had wanted to expand at the airport for some time but congestion had prevented it.

Now the authority which allocates slots at Gatwick, Airport Coordination Limited, has given easyJet more places.

The airline has already started selling seats for four new destinations from the airport - Edinburgh, Malaga, Palma and Zurich - starting from February 12.

This doubles the number of destinations served by the airline from Gatwick from four to eight and it will operate 20 daily services.

British Airways is thought to have abandoned plans for a full-scale withdrawal from Gatwick, one option being considered by the company in a report to be presented at the end of the month.

However, BA is likely to cut its under-performing flights to destinations such as Lyons, Naples, Bologna, Hamburg, Venice, Stuttgart and long-haul services to South America.

The addition of a twice-daily easyJet service to Zurich was a direct substitute for a British Airways service axed at the end of October.

Ray Webster, easyJet's chief executive, said: "The success of our existing Gatwick services has encouraged us to push publicly for even more take-off and landing slots in the last year.

"We always said that if we got more slots we would add more routes and more frequency to existing routes.

"So I am delighted that today we are announcing the news that during Summer 2002 easyJet will be the second-biggest scheduled airline at Gatwick."

BAA Gatwick spokesman Richard Stocks said: "The landscape here at Gatwick has changed considerably since September 11 and the organisation which allocates slots has decided there is room now here for other airlines.

"A number of airlines have cancelled and postponed certain routes or services and this has made more room available."